Natural Toxins Research Center shows new home

KINGSVILLE - The research that professor John Perez started at Texas
A&M University-Kingsville more than 30 years ago began with a study
about woodrats' natural resistance to snake venom.

Over the past three decades, Perez and his students have studied the
properties and potential of snake venom.

What they've discovered just might turn deadly venom into a
life-saving biomedical agent.

Perez welcomed visitors Thursday to the new home of the Natural
Toxins Research Center, the only federally funded Viper Research Center
in the United States, on the Texas A&M University-Kingsville
campus.

There, students divide snake venom and inspect the numerous
molecules that make up the venom to determine whether each molecule can
break up clots.

Snakes use their venom to immobilize and kill their prey by causing
hemorrhaging.

Research from the Natural Toxins Research Center indicates the same
molecules that cause hemorrhaging in a snake's victim also can be used
to prevent clotting that may lead to strokes or heart attacks in
humans.

The center previously was housed in the biology building at the
Texas A&M-Kingsville but was moved to Kleberg Hall to accommodate
the expanding research. The center features new equipment, an emergency
power source and special air filters to help keep tissue samples
viable.

"We have 10 times the space here," Perez said, walking through one
of the handful of labs where students clad in white lab coats peered
into microscopes and glass containers.

Steven Reyes, a graduate student studying molecular biology at
A&M-Kingsville, likes the research he gets to conduct at the
center. But he also knows how tedious the work can be.

Reyes isolates genes from snake venom glands and clones the genes in
bacteria and then tests the genes to determine if they can be used in
biomedicine.

"It took me a year and half, but I did it," Reyes said.

Perez said he is proud of the center and the successful students it
has produced.

"The biomedical research done here and the potential for good will
live on forever in our students," he said.